They read from their debut novel Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl yesterday at Prairie Lights Bookstore. Taking place in the 1990s, the novel follows Paul Polydoris, a shapeshifter that transforms his body.

“He is able to change his appearance and gender on demand and in a manner of minutes. Switching from Paul to Polly, he is the kind of mythical character,” said Michael Valinsky. “We quickly learn that Paul’s gender is mutable and that he’ll transform his body any time he thinks he might get something from the person he is interacting with, be it a sexual release or conversation.”

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl has a strong sense of place, taking the reader on adventures, “through New York City at the height of the aids crisis, Iowa City’s queer punk scene, off-season Provincetown, a women’s festival in Michigan, and, finally, San Francisco,” said The New Yorker. “Lawlor successfully mixes pop culture, gender theory, and smut, but the great achievement here is that Paul is no mere symbol but a vibrant yearning.”

During the Q&A portion of the program, Lawlor discussed the importance of small presses as LGBTQ representation in literature.

“Like many queer and trans people, I’ve been attracted to stories about shapeshifters my whole life, Lawlor said. “I wanted to explore, through art, what it felt like to navigate different spaces and demands around gender.”

Unferth is an associate professor at the University of Texas in Austin. She also runs the Pen-City Writers, a creative writing program at a penitentiary in southern Texas. Her fiction can be found in magazines such as Granta, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, NOON, and the Paris Review. Deb Olin Unferth has received four Pushcart Prizes, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Unferth read from her collection Wait Till You See Me Dance: Stories, which features fiction that, “lures you in with a voice that seems amiable and lighthearted, but it swerves in sudden and surprising ways that reveal, in terrifying clarity, the rage, despair, and profound mournfulness that have taken up residence at the heart of the American dream,” said Greywolf Press.

Unferth read “The First Full Thought of Her Life,” a short story about a shooter getting ready to kill a child ascending a sand dune. The short story shifts perspectives and warps time.

The post Mission Creek Festival: Andrea Lawlor and Deb Olin Unferth @ Prairie Lights 4/5/2018 appeared first on KRUI Radio.

The band name was based on, “those sort of old movies that were called weepies, where you could basically be guaranteed that if you needed a good cry, you could go and see one of these and bring your hankie and have a good time,” said Talan. “We want to make music that touches them and moves them in that way; the place where tears come from, for joy and for sorrow.

Two years after releasing their debut album Happiness in 2003, The Weepies recorded their sophomore album in their bedroom in Pasadena California. Shortly after performing a sold-out show at The Living Room in New York City, The Weepies signed with Nettwerk Record Label. With a widening fan-base and label support, Say I Am You peaked at number one for most downloaded folk albums in eight countries.

Their third album Hideaway found immediate success by selling 14,000 copies in the first week. A few of the tracks from the album were featured on Sex and the City, Life Unexpected, and The Fosters, among others. Their fourth album Be My Thrill emulated their previous success by peaking at number 34 on the Top 200 Billboard Charts.

The Weepies have sold more than a million records and have accumulated over 30 million views on YouTube and 90 million streams on Spotify.

After Talan announced she was in remission from stage-three breast cancer, The Weepies released Sirens which stands as their most successful album to date. The 16 songs hang together as, “a musical photo album.”

“We didn’t write specifically about anything that happened – it’s much more satisfying and interesting to just be open in the moment and see where the music goes,” said The Weepies. “The songs that made it to the surface are all informed by what went on below.”

Talen and Tannen describe working together as musicians while being married to one another as, “the best of times, it is the worst of times!” they said. “There’s really nowhere to hide – everything comes out in the open quickly, so things can’t fester.  It makes for a healthier life overall probably, but there is also bloodletting.  We still enjoy each other, and making music together, and raising kids.”

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The quartet revived modern protest music with a combination of, “speedy grooves, sing-along tunes and deadpan lyrics that achieved a kind of boneheaded genius,” said Rolling Stone.

The Ramones had a relentless passion for live performance. This landed them a contract to perform at famous New York City Music Club CBCB. The Ramones would perform there over seventy-four times in 1974. Their sets lasted an average of twenty minutes.

“They started playing different songs, and it was just this wall of noise,” said founder of Punk Magazine Legs McNeil. “They looked so striking. These guys were not hippies. This was something completely new.”

The Ramones had a definitive style of blue jeans, black leather jackets, and long hair with bangs cut just above the eye. This anti-glamour persona was a tribute to the greaser era that died a decade earlier.

Over the span of eighteen months, The Ramones released three albums with Sire Studios. Their debut self-titled album opened with smash hit “Blitzkrieg Bop,” which was named after the German World War Two bombing tactic. The song took a stand against Nazism.

Front man Joey Ramone wrote the second track called “Beat on the Brat.” It was inspired by his experiences growing up in the lower class suburb of Birchwood Towers. “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” also dealt with the concept of adolescent trauma through the usage of minimalistic lyrics and simple chord progressions.

Their next two albums Leave Home and Rocket to Russia were released the following year. Leave Home featured more sophisticated songs than their debut. The Ramones successfully found a balance between traditional rock and innovative pop.

Leave Home featured a cover of Henry Glover and Morris Levy’s classic “California Sun” as well as their trademark track “Pinhead.” The album also included “Carbona Not Glue”, which was a follow-up track to their controversial “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue.” The track was later removed from the album to avoid a potential lawsuit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyEEdcow2vE

Rocket To Russia continued to show their promise. The album would later become their most financially successful album to date. Surf Rock and Bubblegum Pop influenced their single “Sheena Is A Punk Rocker” which was about, “a teenage girl [who] eschews surfing and her friends’ dance parties to head to New York City and be a punk.” Joey Ramone affirmed that it was the first teenage rebellion song ever made.

Their lighthearted lyrics were often considered to be parodies with a twist. The Ramones continued their Surf Rock influence with the track “Rockaway Beach” which became their highest charting Billboard single in their career.

The album also protested more serious issues such as lobotomies and drug abuse in “Teenage Lobotomy” and homosexuality and infant disease in “We’re A Happy Family.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQlM59sDJVo

The Ramones perfected a sound that was, “Short and simple, frantic and full of hooks,” said PBS. “Their hectic pace was as evident in their music as in their work schedule. Relentlessness and mayhem became synonymous with The Ramones and with punk itself.”

After the release of their fourth studio album Road To Ruin, producer Phil Spector offered the Ramones an opportunity to costar in a musical about rock rebellion. Rock & Roll High School marked a vital shift in the direction of the Ramones. Phil Spector insisted that the band shifted to pop music. Their highly anticipated and expensively produced album End of the Century ruined their momentum punk rock aesthetic.

Their stripped-down sound influenced a long line of punk predecessors such as Patti Smith, The Talking Heads, The Clash, Nirvana, Metallica, and Green Day. However, the industry mocked them, the media rejected them, and radio stations refused to air their music. This in turn heightened the tension between the band mates.

“The Ramones toured steadily – playing something like 150 shows some years, spending hours and days going from city to city in a van, often finding fault with one another and erupting into fights,” said Rolling Stone. “They would climb into their van and ride to a hotel or their next show in silence. Two of the members, Johnny and Joey, did not speak to each other for most of the band’s 22-year history.”

The love affair between Linda Danielle and Johnny Ramone ruined the band’s relationship with Joey Ramone. When him and Danielle married, he became cynical and isolated, yet refused to leave the band.

Sire Records hired five different producers to work on their next six studio albums: Pleasant Dreams (1981), Subterranean Jungle (1983), Animal Boy (1986), Halfway to Sanity (1987) and Brain Drain (1989). It was an era of constant bickering, substance abuse, numerous lineup changes, and mental instability. The band was seen to have a curse.

“It sounded as if the Ramones were competing with their own shadows; they played faster, harder, as if trying to catch up with many of the hardcore bands that were running with their original template of short songs and high-speed beats,” said Rolling Stone.

The 1985 release of “Bonzo Goes To Bitburg” was seen as the light amidst the darkness for the Ramones. Featured as a single on Animal Boy as “My Brin is Hanging Upside Down” the single was an emotionally charged commentary on the Reagan Administration and their involvement in Bitburg Germany. President Reagan set down wreaths beside 44 Nazi SS graves. The term “Bonzo goes to Bitburg” was coined by protesters after the incident. The track became a massive success on college campuses and catalyzed protests among concerned Americans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su0Hvt6hTmA

The punk rock band from Forest Hills Queens proved that music was the proper response to the arc of history. Their curse was a reminder that protest, though well-intentioned, came with opposition. The Ramones will be remembered for their steadfast effort to promote equality through their definitive style, simple hooks and politically charged lyrics.

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Pee Wee’s Great Adventure inspired Myers to play a fully-grown man that acted like a teenager—the kind of humor that was a “heightened-reality version of the suburban heavy-metal experience,” said Vulture.

Carvey played Garth Algar, the shy best friend of Wayne Campbell. His character showed a new breadth of comedy—the kind that thrived off a detached—almost juvenile awkwardness.

He was behind the curve; both in his looks and love life.

Garth had frizzled blonde hair that came down to his shoulders. He wore ripped jeans and an unbuttoned flannel with a Led Zeppelin shirt underneath. Oversized black frames protruded out of his scrunched face. With flock t-shirt printing you can create the most original t-shirt designs.

His mad-scientist-like approach was an “affectionate tribute to his older brother Brad, an accomplished engineer who helped develop the hardware for the then-popular editing program Video Toaster,” said Rolling Stone. His older brother also inspired his scrunched face and monotone voice.

Neither Carvey nor Myers had much experience with film shoots prior. With the film being shot in just 34 days during the summer of 1991—director Penelope Spheeris let them work the way they did on Saturday Night Live. This meant that they could frequently change sketches and reaction shots. The promotion of improvisation on set allowed Meyers to let his extrovert personality run wild. His comedy was a success at the expense of other characters. Rarely, Wayne the punch line of his own joke. It made his collapse-of-fame that much more satisfying. Wayne’s World was the first film that made Ad placement a joke in itself.

In the Chinese takeout scene, one of the cast members knew that Meyers was going to go off script. Editors later had to find a way to cut around the laughter on set. Another spot of improvisation was the philosophical car hood scene. As they stared up at the stars, Garth and Wayne shared another satirically intimate moment of Bugs Bunny and Robo-babes. This scene “was all shot quickly on the last day, and almost completely improvised – one last chance for the actors to throw in whatever else they wanted to before wrapping production,” said Rolling Stone.

Wayne had long and greasy black hair tucked underneath the iconic Wayne’s World baseball hat. His narrow eyes and wide smile accompanied his signature thumbs up and air quotations to the camera. His catchphrases like, “Schwing!” and “Not!” became an instant cultural sensation. Wayne also popularized the interchanges, “No Way! Way!” and “Party On!” which became 90s trademarks.

The success of the film inspired an action video game developed by Radical Entertainment. It was released predominately on NES and Game Boy consoles. Wayne and Garth were trapped inside the Zoltar Game Machine that was featured in the motion picture. The gameplay revolved around chasing down and shooting at a purple blob with a guitar. The video game also featured Donut monsters and backstage groupies. It resembled the early Donkey Kong gameplay.

“The worlds are filled with rather dull-looking and over-used backgrounds and items,” said Rolling Stone. “The same annoying tune loops in the background during the levels and cut scenes, broken by the sound of you firing a shot or getting hurt.” Although the video game received negative reviews, it further exemplified the power of the films cult following.

Earlier this year Aurora Illinois hosted a festival for Wayne’s Worlds 25th anniversary. This celebration included cardboard cutouts of Wayne and Garth, authentic costumes, movie screenings, an attempt to establish the world record for the amount of people head banging to the Bohemian Rhapsody, and the display of a vintage AMC Pacer seen in the film.

“This cult classic has had long legs to it, and the fact it’s a filmed fictional piece that references Aurora is something that has created some fun here, and we’re looking forward to celebrating it,” said Marissa Amoni to The Beacon News. “We’re going to have things like Luigi’s Pizza renaming their arcade ‘Noah’s Arcade’ after the Noah Vanderhoff’s arcade seen in the movie, and Jen Rauch will be hosting a First Friday’s event at her store in February.”

Wayne’s World will always be a trademark for the 90s as the cult classic that never ceased to make the Bohemian Rhapsody relevant.

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“No other group carried such a weight of expectation – and tradition – as the Smiths,” said the Guardian. “Had they not risen to the occasion, it is not overstating the case to say that the entire trajectory of recent British rock music as we now know it – that’s the line from the Smiths to the Stone Roses to Oasis and on to the Libertines and today’s indie darlings, Arctic Monkeys – would not have been traced.”

The single “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” reached Number 10 on the UK Charts and established The Smiths as both prominent musicians and social activists. Johnny Marr wrote “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” in an hour in a New York City hotel room.

“Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” examined human worth and the concept of time over a whiny guitar, sporadic tambourine, and climbing bass. The 1960 Sandie Shaw single “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” inspired the title.

The single was vital in establishing the relationship with their longtime producer Stephen Street and stood as a prelude to their political-critique album “Meat Is Murder” which debuted less than a year later. The production disappointment of their first self-titled album inspired Johnny Marr and Morrissey to produce “Meat Is Murder” with Stephen Street as their engineer.

The “Meat Is Murder” cover used a photograph entitled “Soldier Rests.” It featured Marine Cpl. Michael Wynn in Da Nang, South Vietnam. The wording on the helmet was changed from, “Make War Not Love” to, “Meat Is Murder.”

The opening song on the album “The Headmaster Ritual” was a critique on corporal-punishment within Manchester schools. Morrissey used unsettling imagery, clattering sounds, and hypnotic onomatopoeias to show the breadth of emotional and physical abuse. Childhood tribulation was also found in the sole single “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” which used a conversational approach to discuss suicide and loneliness.

Morrissey later revealed to Melody Maker that the song was in response to the harsh journalistic attempts to expose him as a fraud. His opposition of the Thatcher Administration and monarchy lead to this tension. A similar discussion of suicide and loneliness was found in their single “Asleep.” It shows the devastation of not wanting to wake up.

Morrissey was a vegetarian from the age of twelve and used his media controversy to express his beliefs for animal rights. Morrissey forbid his band members from being photographed eating meat and insisted that his tour venues serve no meat on the nights he performs. Their pro-vegetarian track concluded the politically strident album.

“The meteoric rise continued with Meat Is Murder debuting at Number One on the British chart; the group also caused a stir with Morrissey’s stage presence, the singer wearing a garland of gladioli in tribute to Oscar Wilde, a hearing aid in homage to Fifties balladeer Johnnie Ray, and a ducktail haircut patterned after English rocker Billy Fury,” said Rolling Stone. “His champions, though, hailed his oblique, angst-driven songs as latter-day examples of Ray Davies-styled social commentary.”

Their single “Shakespeare’s Sister” was released a month after “Meat Is Murder.” Although the single received minimal commercial success, it was vital towards the progression of the band. The title refers to a Virginia Woolf feminist essay that argues if William Shakespeare had a sister of equal ability she would not be as famous.

It’s essentially a suicide drama set to a demented rock’n’roll rhythm,” said the Guardian. “Musically the song evokes an older, more raw rock era, with echoes of both Bo Diddley and the early Rolling Stones in its galloping rhythm. Lyrically, though, it draws on an incredible variety of sources, none of which would have impinged on the consciousness of a less erudite, or indeed eccentric, songwriter.”

Their third studio album “The Queen Is Dead” spent twenty-two weeks on the UK charts and went Gold in the United States shortly after. Ex-Aztec guitarist Craig Gannon made his debut on the album. Through Macbeth references, pronounced backbeats, and a hard rock, Morrissey shatters, “the myth that he is a self-pitying sap,” said All Music.

“Morrissey delivers a devastating set of clever, witty satires of British social mores, intellectualism, class, and even himself.” At the forefront of the album their two smash-hits, “The Boy With the Thorn in His Side” and “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.”

“Panic” was their first recording after “The Queen Is Dead.” The song mentions the chaos unraveling within Britain. It condemns disco for ruining pop music. “Panic” was a response to the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster and received heavy criticism. The pinnacle of this criticism was when Journalist Nick Kent called the song a mandate for, “Rock terrorism.”

After a disappointing American tour, a severe car accident hospitalizing Morrissey, the firing of Gannon, a heroin addicted bassist, and an exhausted Marr, The Smiths disbanded. “It was possibly the most fraught, emotional and oft-lamented breakups in musical history,” said Rolling Stone. The Smiths were revered for their politically-charged ideologies, everyman sentiment, and desire to reconcile with their haunting past.

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The road movie documented the rise of counter-culture in a way that dated Westerns, Hollywood heroes, or European art films could not. The French New Wave promoted a revolutionary experimentation with editing, conscious rejection of literary tradition, aesthetic documentary styles, and narrative ambiguity. Early road cinema was influenced by that French New Wave. It used heterosexual couples, displaced families, and masculine fantasies to forge episodic escapes. Road cinema was categorized as coming-of-age films focused more on the journey than the destination.

Easy Rider documented the Hippie movement, rampant narcotic sales, and faux utopian communes that came into fruition in the 1970s. Road cinema was known for its dissolute men who become buddies over the duration of their adventures. There was a cinematic reliance on the landscape to establish the direction of the film. Narrow highways collided with a distant blue sky, rusty telephone poles stood amidst vast deserts, motorcycles were hidden behind a cloud of dust and debris. It formed a spectacle that was breathtakingly alluring. The road stood as a tableau for freedom; a terrain yet to be discovered.

Two bikers, one the reincarnate of Captain America and the other a reincarnate of Davey Crockett, smuggled cocaine from the borders of Mexico to inner-city Los Angeles. A posh Rolls-Royce riding dealer bought the drugs for a large sum of money. It would later be stuffed into two California-style choppers and ransomed across the country.

Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) hit the road in search of a new frontier. With their destination set on New Orleans, the two buddies confronted alcoholic prisoners, traditional farmsteads, hippie hitchhikers, free love, gateway drug theories, and communes that seemed to be more misleading than the American Dream.

Wyatt and Billy were staged as radicals with their leather jackets, long hair, conspicuous shades, cowboy boots, and overgrown beards. Which, formed a facade overall. It was almost as if they wanted society to resent them as much as they resented themselves.

George (Jack Nicholson), an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, befriends Wyatt and Billy and frees them from prison. George calls himself a “true” American. In truth, he does not know who he is. George fears that his freedom is in the hands of a radical movement when it is really in the hands of change.

“George is a handsome, alcoholic young lawyer of good family and genially bad habits, a man whose only defense against life is a cheerful but not abject acceptance of it,” said the New York Times. “As played by Nicholson, George Hanson is a marvelously realized character, who talks in a high, squeaky Southern accent and uses a phrase like ‘Lord have mercy!’ the way another man might use a four-letter word.”

When George was brutally murdered, Easy Rider could not recover, similar to its two main characters. The scene around the campfire led to their realization that America was not the land of the free or the home of the brave.

“[George] is completely happy and, ironically, the only person in the movie who seems to have a sense of what liberation and freedom are,” said the New York Times. “There is joy and humor and sweetness when he smokes grass for the first time and expounds an elaborate theory as to how the Venutians have already conquered the world.”

Wyatt and Billy tried to rationalize the death of George with senseless profanity, distorted memories, ravaging sex, social alienation, and moral ambiguity. This rationalization ended when Wyatt said, “We blew it,” near the end of the film.

Wyatt knew that their behavior did not foster any spiritual fulfillment or societal acclaim. Their actions further distanced themselves from freedom: retirement in Florida. Wyatt could not find America. That admission was hidden underneath his anti-establishment rhetoric, brooding pessimism, and reckless ambition.

The conventions in which America functioned were abandoned in Easy Rider. This was evident in the bordello scene, which acted as their literal arrival to New Orleans. Over the duration of their journey, Mardi Gras transformed from a place to a state of mind.

When Wyatt and Billy arrived, Mardi Gras turned out to be a detrimental disappointment. Wyatt said to the prostitute, “You know on the street what is happening?” This showed that he still held onto a past that never existed, a form of nostalgia rooted in regret. He acted as if to keep alive the innocence sacrificed in route to New Orleans.

As the Mardi Gras celebrations took place on the streets below the brothel, Wyatt came up with the idea to visit a cemetery. This scene immersed the audience into an acid trip with incohesive jump cuts, haunting voiceovers, cult-like religious references, canted cinematography, and erotic spectacle. This experimental scene contrasted with the traditional linear arch of the road film.

On route to Florida, Wyatt and Billy abandoned the commune. Two Rednecks followed close behind in a truck. As Billy raised his middle finger in a siege of rebellion, one red neck shot him in the chest. Billy landed on the side of the road as the truck drove into the distance. Wyatt draped his American flag jacket over a dying Billy. His last words, “I’m gonna get him,” immortalized his delusion.

Wyatt drove after the truck in a last ditch effort to avenge the death of his buddy. The redneck shot Wyatt, blew up his motorcycle, and continued on in the direction of Florida.

Films do not become Cult Classics based on the questions they answer but rather the questions they pose. Easy Rider is an example of a cult classic that transcends the boundaries of time. It is a stark reminder that life is consequential, rebellion is rarely self-evident, and freedom takes more than it provides.

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